A month and a half with no post.  Things are good right now.  Really good.  S is doing really well at school.  We had a conference with her teacher this morning and it seems that she is right on track.  They did testing the second week of school and she got everything correct that they had already gone over.  She is having the most problem with recognizing sounds.  Like she sees and ‘M’ and knows what it is, but she can’t tell you that the word ‘mom’ makes an ‘M’ sound.  The teacher wasn’t concerned though.

There was one incident at school a couple of weeks ago that involved one of the extended care workers.  S had had a particularly rough morning and she was having a meltdown when it was time to go to school.  She was still crying when we got there.  I carried her in all the while trying to calm her down.  She was hugging my leg and didn’t want to stay there (normally she is fine going to school).  The worker who is there in the morning looked at me and said, “you can’t leave her here like this considering her history”.  We have only told three people at the school that we are adopting her.  Her teacher, the guidance counselor and the extended day director.  The only reason we told them was because her name change wasn’t legal when school started, but we wanted them to go ahead and call her by her new last name.  Anyway, this woman, who we hadn’t told about the adoption, says that in front of all the other kids in the cafeteria.  They weren’t really paying attention, but still, it was way out of line.  So she’s adopted, so what?  At that moment, she was a 5 year old having a tantrum.  I ended up picking her up and carrying her out to the car while she was biting and scratching me and we sat there for twenty minutes until she calmed down.  I was 45 minutes late to work that morning.  Yesterday DH spoke with the director about what happened and he brought up that she was violating FERPA by saying that.  That definitely got her attention and she said it was unacceptable and that she would speak with the worker about what happened and assured us it would never happen again.  We aren’t ashamed that she is adopted, but it is her private information that the school shouldn’t be sharing with others.  It should be her decision whether she shares that with other people.

We have seen major improvements with her behavior in the past few weeks.  We have started giving her melatonin at night and it has been a miracle for her routine.  Now she actually gets sleep and is in bed asleep by 8:00 most nights.  Well, on the floor because she likes to sleep there, don’t ask me why. 

We found a new therapist for S because the old one just didn’t seem to be working for us, plus she wasn’t covered by our insurance.  The new one is and we really like her.  It’s more like family therapy instead of just therapy for S.

Our life has really been turned upside down in the last three months.  We have decided to take ourselves off of the waiting list with our agency for an infant.  We just can’t afford it now that we have adopted S.  We want to be able to enjoy her and not have to worry about saving every single dime plus fundraising.  In that same vein, we donated our last frozen embryo.  That was a tough decision.  We got a bill in the mail for $300 to store it for another year.  We knew we weren’t going to use it, but it was a hard decision letting it go.  I was torn about what to do with it.  I asked DH if he would consider donating it to someone we knew (no one in particular) who needed it.  He said that he wouldn’t be able to handle that.  I see his point, but it’s hard for me to imagine that someone out there might be carrying and raising my genetic material.  Not that genetics matter for shit anyway, but it is what it is.

So it seems that we have an only child.  Not what I envisioned for my life, but really, what I envisioned for my life went out the window years ago.  I was kind of sad about that for a while, but I think I’m actually happy about it now.  When all was said and done, I felt relief.  We’ve been on this never-ending ride for years now and it was so nice to be able to step off and just sit in the moment and enjoy it.